Recently during a training session I had the fortunate opportunity to be reminded of some basic martial maxims. The class focus was on in-fighting techniques to take-down and control tactics. In this case it was elbow strikes to standing arm bar take-down. With a few repetitions of the said techniques I decided to show the arm bar escape (re-establishing leverage via pulling in your elbow close to your body or vice versa and then rolling out). After successfully escaping the arm-bar exercise my student/partner went into continue mode which became an impromptu grappling match. I chose to slap in a guillotine in half guard over acquiring full guard (mistake #1: position over submission), after which he eventually powered out. He then slowed crawled towards the wall with me in tow in half guard. At this point I am thinking that this would be good for me as I would be able to use the wall to get up (ie wall walk). Instead of heading perpendicular to the wall, my partner positioned us parallel to the wall and beside my wavemaster tower bag. Now I am stuck between the wall and the tower bag which meant I had no room to reposition or sweep (mistake #2: not fully analysing or recognizing the situation of potential hazards/obstructions). At this point I had no leverage and no room to work my bottom game which left me to rely solely on strength on strength tug-of-war for wrist control. Suffice to say it was exhausting (mistake #3: under-estimating my partners strength and ability - ground game). After a few minutes of wrist control war, we reached a stalemate, bumped fists and resumed the class lessons. Opposed to letting my ego get bruised, I recognized that these lessons were required as it was a needed wake up call to shed the complacency. I realized I was not fully prepared - yes it was just an exercise, but I should be ready to respond and react on the fly. What I took away - always train at 110% and be ready in all situations in the gym and the street!